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Biomedical subjects

D S Tuber

Publications and source records attributed to D S Tuber.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Behavioral and glucocorticoid responses of adult domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to companionship and social separation.

Removal of 1 member of a long-standing pair of adult domestic dog (Canis familiaris) kennel mates from the home run for 4 hr had no effect on the behavior or plasma glucocorticoid levels of the remaining dog. When tested in a novel environment, dogs showed increased activity and elevated glucocorticoid levels at the end of the session, but these responses were as large when the dogs were with their kennel mates as when they were alone. However, activity and glucocorticoid levels were not elevated if the dogs were exposed to the novel environment in the presence of their human caretaker. Dogs more often were observed in proximity with, and soliciting social behavior from, the human than the kennel mate. These results highlight the importance of human companionship for the domestic dog and point to a difference in the nature of the social relationships of dogs with humans and with conspecifics.

Animals↗
PubMed1985

Cardiac orienting and habituation to auditory and vibrotactile stimuli in the infant decerebrate rat.

Phasic changes in heart rate were used to evaluate sensory reactivity and habituation in 5- and 12-day-old normal and decerebrate rats. Twenty-four and forty-eight hours after thalamic transection, temporally paired auditory or vibrotactile stimuli were repeatedly presented in a sensory disparity paradigm. While tone stimuli failed to evoke consistent cardiac change, vibrotactile stimuli produced cardiac decelerations, characteristic of the orienting response, in all subject groups. The magnitude of this response was comparable in both normal and decerebrate subjects at 5 days of age, but demonstrated a more notable increase with age in the normal subjects. Habituation of the cardiac response was apparent in all groups, and was not significantly different in the normal and decerebrate subjects. No consistent responses were apparent in any group to the unexpected omission of the second stimulus of the pair. Results indicate that orienting and habituation processes can persist in the absence of the cerebral hemispheres and support the view that lower levels of the neuraxis are capable of mediating a range of adaptive functions.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1985

Cardiac reactivity and adaptive behavior.

The relationship between adaptive behavioral function and cardiac reactivity to auditory, somatosensory, and visual stimuli was evaluated using a heterogeneous population of developmentally disabled infants and young children. Stimuli of all sensory modalities resulted predominantly in a cardiac deceleration, and the magnitude of these responses varied systematically between subjects. A multiple regression analysis revealed that 60% of the variance in adaptive behavior, as measured by the Adaptive Behavior Scale for Infants and Early Childhood, could be accounted for by age and the cardiac responses. The factor with the greatest predictive weighting was cardiac reactivity to a vibrotactile stimulus, which showed a correlation of .65 with adaptive behavior scores.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1983

The decerebrate human: associative learning.

Phasic changes in cardiac reactivity to innocuous stimuli, presented in a sensory disparity paradigm, were used to evaluate habituation and learning processes in five decerebrate subjects. Three subjects showed systematic changes over trials in the pattern of cardiac response to simple auditory or visual stimuli, indicative of habituation. In addition, tests for associative learning were given after repeated presentations of two paired stimuli. The appearance of a marked cardiac orienting response, to the unpredictable omission of the second stimulus, documented the development of a conditioned association in these same three subjects. One additional subject failed to show a consistent pattern of response to the stimuli, and another demonstrated a consistent response which was not subject to habituation. Overall, these findings support the view that learning processes are not solely the product of the cerebral hemispheres, but reflect general integrative features of the human neuraxis.

Association Learning↗
PubMed1980

Associative learning in premature hydranencephalic and normal twins.

A hydranencephalic infant lacking cerebral hemispheres and a normal twin were tested for associative learning. After repeated trials in which two stimuli were temporally paired, test trials were given in which the second stimulus was omitted. Cardiac orienting responses to stimulus omission indicated that learning had taken place in both infants.

Anencephaly↗